This invention relates to the art of butchering, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for processing the legs of chickens and other poultry.
There is interest in automating various aspects of poultry processing that were previously done by hand, and in improving existing equipment, both in terms of product quality and processing speed.
In the field of poultry processing, severing legs from the body of the bird and removing the drumstick from the thigh are two chores that have been difficult to do well automatically, owing to difficult and varying geometry of these portions. Copending prior application Ser. No. 07/649,949 describes an apparatus which was particularly suited to cutting up the lower half of a chicken carcass.
This application describes a modified form of the apparatus; the modifications are at the upstream end of the apparatus (as shown in FIGS. 2-4 of the parent application), where carcasses are automatically transferred from a shackle conveyor to chain conveyors which subsequently move the product through a series of cutting stations.